When providing a product or service it is easy to get fixated with your skills, talent and experience and the product or service you are selling. However it may be better to understand WHO and WHAT people are buying and WHY.
WHAT IS THE SUCCESS CRITERIA
For example for one client I worked with we talked about the internal customer and noted a mis-match between what some departments were providing and what others were valuing. In simple terms we can consider the engineers dilemma, you can have it faster, cheaper or better, but not all three. A supplier providing lots of details after the deadline is not valued by a buyer wanting a quick summary before a decision.
Different people value different things, and value is "...what the customer is prepared to pay for..." and this may be any of the following...
Speed
Quality
Detail
Brevity
Authority
Compliance
Assurance
Confidence
Consensus
I bet you can add at least 10 more criteria to this list!
WHO IS THE CUSTOMER
This may be more complex than you think! Noting that different people value different things we may recognise that any product or service may have many "customers", we might call them clients, customers, consumers, users, sponsors, stakeholders, gatekeepers etc., And they all value something different. For technology product or service some may value security, others usability, others flexibility and some price. Understanding who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed in the buying process can be useful to navigating to a successful proposition.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT
It seems obvious delivering perfection too late is not helpful for someone really focussed on speed, price or deadline. It would be like turning-up to the Olympic Finals 2 days late and finishing the 100 meters in 9.7 seconds. You won't win a medal for your efforts. That is why athletes are clear about performance, goals, timescales and deadlines. You should be similarly clear about your success criteria. Even Facebook says "Done is better than perfect!" But be clear in some cases 99% perfect is simply not good enough. If we were to assume a 1% failure rate: 40,000,000 flights * 0.01 = 400,000 plane crashes!
MIXING IT UP
Clearly we might loop through these questions a few times to be really clear on our target audience and our proposition so that we understand the client, their need, and how our product or service satisfies that need. With one Management Consulting business we used SPIN because you cannot sell a solution to someone who does not have a need. We therefore took time to understand the following elements.
Situation
Problem
Implication
Need
This helps us understand Purpose (what are we trying to achieve) and Relevance (what is the context). Having one without the other is pointless because (another sporting metaphor) running 100 meters to the shops is name the same as running 100 meters in the Olympic finals. Performance and context must fit together for the result to be meaningful. In a business context this might recognise that delivery of a technology platform only really adds value when people, processes, and operatons are aligned with it.
PURPOSE AND BRAND
I remember a great quote from Tom Goodwin. We live in a world where brands want to be more like people and people want to be more like brands. I recollect a conversation that said Breakfast at a Cafe is £10, at the Hilton £20 and at Burj Al Arab maybe £100 and therefore everyone's personal brand should be Burj Al Arab.
I'd challenge this. Not everyone wants a Ferrari some people get better use and value from a people carrier, others someting with a tow-bar and a roof rack. If I was a vehicle I'd be a VW van, flexible, versatile sufficiently smart on the right occasions and utilitarian when needed. That is my "brand". It it not better or worse than any other, it is about "fit for purpose" someting we sometimes forget when cutting price or driving for perfection.
There is no right or wrong - but what fits between what you offer and what your customer values.
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Tim HJ Rogers
MBA Management Consultant + Change Practitioner
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Mob 447797762051 Tim@AdaptConsultingCompany.com
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